Tel Aviv awoke Wednesday morning to missile sirens. Fortunately, no casualties or damage were reported.
This is a significant escalation by Hezbollah, because Tel Aviv has the highest population density in Israel, making it especially vulnerable to mass casualty missile attacks.
Hezbollah has relentlessly bombarded northern Israel for almost 12 months, depopulating the entire region and killing dozens of people even despite mass evacuations.
Though purportedly in “solidarity” with Gaza, Hezbollah actually began these attacks on October 8, weeks before Israel had even begun its response to the massacre of October 7.
In truth, Hezbollah’s attacks were entirely unprovoked, and nearly a year of American diplomacy has failed to stop them.
Israel’s unfolding strategy is beginning to become evident.
On September 17 some 3,000 secure military pagers used by Hezbollah mysteriously exploded, wiping out the terror group’s main communications network as well as disabling many of the people who use it.
The following day, as Hezbollah resorted to walkie-talkies, those exploded as well.
Hezbollah leaders had just resorted to in-person meetings, when a precision Israeli strike wiped out some 20 top leaders, who were holding a top secret meeting in an underground parking lot beneath a civilian building.
One of those leaders was head of the elite Radwan Forces, Ibrahim Aqil: the second Hezbollah commander killed by Israel in recent months who has had a multi-million dollar American bounty on his head. (The first was Fuad Shukr, in late July). It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that Israel is, to some extent, fighting America’s wars for it. In addition to killing large numbers of Americans over the years, Aqil had also masterminded a plan called “Occupy the Galilee,” a proposed October 7 style invasion of Israel but on a vastly larger scale.
Israel then turned to Hezbollah’s munitions, striking over 1,600 targets just on Monday alone. News outlets have widely featured the misleading claim that “over 500 people were killed, including children” yet just like Hamas, Lebanon’s health service does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, calling into question the credibility of the figures. Given that Israel struck only military targets, it’s likely that the vast majority of casualties were combatants.
Even if one accepts the Lebanese casualty figures, that would mean that Israel produces, on average, less than one casualty per strike, with most strikes killing no one at all.
This is a degree of caution and restraint unheard of in modern warfare, especially given the enormous arsenal that Israel is facing, much of which is aimed at Israel’s civilian centers.
What’s the big picture?
Israeli leaders have referred to Iran as the “head of the snake” or “octopus” though a better metaphor might be a chess player: Hezbollah’s massive arsenal, located right on Israel’s border, is like having an attacking piece close to an opponent’s king – if Israel tries to attack Iran’s nuclear program, then Iran can use Hezbollah to decimate the Israeli home front.
Under this deterrence, Iran has methodically built its “Ring of Fire” strategy – a massive attack that would hit Israel from every front simultaneously, with the goal of overwhelming the IDF and destroying the Jewish state.
Iran’s funding and training of Hamas and Hezbollah, its involvement in the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars, its support for terror groups located in Judea/Samaria (the West Bank), even its nuclear weapons program, are all a part of the Ring of Fire preparations.
Yet in just seven days, Israel dramatically decreased Hezbollah’s capacities, and thus its effectiveness as an Iranian chess piece.
Nonetheless, Israel’s primary goal is to return its residents to the North, which means Hezbollah could end this conflict by simply agreeing to cease its bombardments. Against all odds and reason, Hezbollah seems determined to fight on.
What’s next?
Israel meticulously planned these strikes for decades: they are what’s called “shaping operations,” which prepare the battlefield for a larger operation by reducing enemy capabilities.
Shaping operations will likely continue for days or weeks, yet eventually, if Hezbollah does not relent, Israel will have to launch a ground invasion and occupy some portion of Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah is prepared, having built a force of supposedly 100,000 fighters and a tunnel network larger and more sophisticated than that of Hamas.
Yet Hezbollah’s capabilities are not what they were, and over the past year in Gaza, Israel has demonstrated tremendous capacity to avoid booby traps and battlefield abduction attempts.
Israel follows the “Ben-Gurion Doctrine” of pursuing offensive actions on only one front at a time, in order to maximize the IDF’s limited resources and protect the home front.
As a result, Israel could not move aggressively against Hezbollah until after winding down operations in Gaza, and Israel cannot directly pursue Iran until Hezbollah is no longer a major threat.
Yet despite very real and significant dangers, Israel does appear to be on a path toward building a safer world one step at a time: for itself, for the Middle East and for the entire world at large.
The writer is an expert in international law, an adjunct professor at Reichman and Bar-Ilan Universities, and the CEO of RealityCheck, an nonprofit NGO dedicated to clarifying global conversations. He lives in Tel Aviv, and can be found on Instagram at @realitycheckresearch or at www.RealityCheckResearch.org